InMotion

InMotion offers three Linux-based shared Web hosting plans. The most basic, Launch ($7.99 per month with an annual subscription), supports two websites and up to six domains. Power ($9.99 per month with an annual subscription) nets you six websites and up to 26 domains, while Pro ($15.99 per month with an annual subscription) offers unlimited websites and unlimited domains. All InMotion shared hosting plans include unlimited email, storage, and monthly data transfers, which is a nice touch.

That said, HostGator£2.54 at HostGator UK gets the nod as the PCMag Editors' Choice award-winning shared Web hosting service. InMotion's rival also offers unlimited domains, email, storage, and monthly data transfers, and it adds the choice of Linux- or Windows-based server. The Windows option is an important one if your site has software that runs on an ASP.NET framework.

VPS Hosting Plans

InMotion offers decent VPS hosting, but it starts at a pricey $44.99 per month. Of the VPS services we've tested, only Media Temple with its insane RAM (64GB) and storage (600GB) capacities, costs more money for entry-level VPS hosting. Still, you get decent specs with InMotion, including unlimited email, 8GB of RAM, and 4TB of monthly data transfers with InMotion. Note, however, that Bluehost£2.56 at BlueHost UK has very similar specs for $29.99 per month.

Hostwinds$4.50 at Hostwinds - Shared, the PCMag Editors' Choice for VPS hosting, has wallet-friendly, well-rounded VPS offerings that start at $7.50 per month for 1GB of RAM, 25GB of disk space, unlimited monthly data transfers, unlimited email, and half a CPU core and scale to $172 per month for 28.5GB of RAM, 600GB of disk space, unlimited monthly data transfers, and unlimited email.

Dedicated Hosting Plans

You can configure the company's Linux-based dedicated Web servers (starting at $189 per month) with 1.2TB of storage, 15TB of data transfers per month (which tops Arvixe's 10TB and SiteGround's 5TB), and an impressive 64GB of RAM (the majority of Web hosts we've tested offer 16GB).

Inmotion has solid dedicated Web hosting plans, but HostGator—the PCMag Editors' Choice for dedicated hosting—has better all-around packages. HostGator's servers have up to 25TB of data transfers per month (which is quite generous) and a choice of Linux- or Windows-based operating systems.

Setting Up an InMotion-Hosted Website

We chose the Launch plan, but were disappointed to learn that we had to sign up for a full year. Like most Web hosts, a discount is applied to the first term (for up to three years). InMotion discloses its renewal rates, so you don't get any surprises. In this case, we paid $4.89 per month, discounted from the regular rate of $7.99 per month.

After we chose a domain, funtechtimes.com, the upselling began. First, we were offered an upgrade to the Power plan, then domain privacy ($9.99 per year), managed hosting services, and email protection packs from McAfee. Finally, we were offered the option to add a free content management system (CMS) to our account: WordPress, PrestaShop, or Joomla. At checkout, there was an option to pay by purchase order or check, which we hadn't seen before.

We were worried when the confirmation page said that an account specialist would contact us by phone to help us get started; we couldn't log in otherwise. However, the call was quite helpful, and we weren't pushed into making any additional purchases. The representative asked a few questions about the type of website we wanted to build, and then emailed us welcome materials, including WordPress installation instructions, since we had told her we wanted to create a blog.